A woman entrepreneur turns from high-tech to try a new trade

By Eliza Ridgeway, Town Crier Staff Writer

Joe Hu/town crier Corinne Wayshak holds up one of the shirt designs for her new clothing company, Groovy Goddess. The text on the shirt reads, “Even a Goddess has bad hair days.”

Los Altos resident Corinne Wayshak knew she was going out on a limb with her new business, Groovy Goddess, a woman-oriented apparel line with T-shirts and tanks for women and onesies and shirts for babies. But she was banking on the belief that American women are hungry for a way to connect the modern experience of femininity with its historical roots.

Wayshak has paired some of the oldest feminine archetypes, characters such as Pandora and the lush Venus figures carved in prehistoric Europe, with distinctly modern, and upbeat, slogans. Her simple, curvaceous line drawings show goddess-figures from different cultures around the world, juxtaposed with modern phrases.

Wayshak defines her goddesses with broad strokes - the much-impugned Gorgon Medusa, with a serene expression and a corona of snakes around her head, appears with the words, “Even a Goddess has bad hair days.” The usually intimidating Hindu goddess Kali juggles a baby, dishes and cash in her many arms above the words, “A Goddess invented multitasking.”

Wayshak just returned to Los Altos after a whirlwind introduction to the big business of

apparel.

“I never do anything small,” Wayshak said. She demonstrated her resolve by premiering her clothing line at fashion’s biggest industry tradeshow, the MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas. The women’s-wear section of the event spanned the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center and the Las Vegas Hilton. Wayshak logged four hectic days in August promoting her designs to clothing buyers from around the country.

It took months of preparation for Wayshak to design a booth and learn the tricks of the apparel trade. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad had worked in the high-tech industry, founding two startups after working as a senior manager at Apple Computer. The notion of designing a woman-centric apparel line struck Wayshak from out of the blue, but the huge change of direction made sense in the context of her life.

She was experiencing the peculiar glass ceiling of female designers in the tech industry - being told that at 38, she was too old to design competitively. On a personal level, spirituality and exploration of feminine power and belief had surged in importance for Wayshak following her deeply felt loss of two late-term pregnancies.

“I was reading stories as a therapeutic means to get back to myself,” Wayshak said. “The stories are so rich, but so old they can be inaccessible to people.”

She was impressed with how naturally her daughter, Montclaire School first-grader Gianna, responded to the Goddess designs - she refers to them as “the girls” and promptly requested a shirt for herself.

Wayshak has found that women are usually the ones to react to her designs, but the pictures are also capable of making men chuckle - and buy a shirt for their significant others. She designed her company to reflect the values that inspired its founding. A percentage of the net proceeds are directed to non-profits that support women who have experienced peri- and neonatal death. Wayshak has also researched the apparel industry to find suppliers that use sweatshop-free products and labor.

“I make sure that nothing is being done at the expense - the blood, sweat and tears - of women,” she said.

Wayshak’s professional background has helped her put together a slick-looking company with very little overhead. She designed the promotional materials and shirt graphics herself, using Adobe’s Illustrator program on her home computer.

“I wanted to get it off the ground with as little capital as possible to see how it would do,” Wayshak said.

She returned with an inspiring stack of order slips from the tradeshow - stores around the United States will be stocking the shirts, based entirely on Wayshak’s premiere presentation.

“It was good to have affirmation of what I’m doing,” she said.

Groovy Goddess apparel ranges in price from $26 to $38. For more information, visit www.groovygoddess.com or call Wayshak at 969-3312.